


MPR

by BWaves



Series: Joy and Owen [10]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Midnight Shopping Trip, honestly having trouble thinking of tags, i guess, missing person, waterparks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BWaves/pseuds/BWaves
Summary: Joy learns a bit more about Owen, and it isn’t exactly what he expects.





	MPR

Summer was hot. Texas was hot. Joy jokingly suggested they go to a waterpark, and Owen realized that the best one, ever in his opinion, was actually only about a seven hour drive from their hotel in Amarillo. Joy thought it was insane to drive that far, when he was sure there were waterparks closer, but Owen assured him that he was wrong. Who was Joy to question it anyways, they were in Owen’s home state, he knew this place better than Joy did, so they headed off on their long journey to the waterpark.

The plan was to stop for the night when they got there, and hit up the park first thing in the morning. When they got to their hotel, around midnight, Joy realized that going to a waterpark would be awfully hard without swimsuits, which neither of them had. This had to be rectified and immediately.

So a midnight trip to Wally-World was in order.

“I’m pretty sure there’s, like, health reasons that people can’t wear jeans in swimming pools,” Joy points out, tilting his head toward Owen as the other rolls his eyes.

“Dude, I know that, but that doesn’t mean I have to put up with buying a bathing suit, at midnight.”

“Well, you are putting up with it. Actively putting up with it in fact. If you didn’t want to put up with it, then you should’ve brought one with you when you decided to drop out of college and go on an exciting cross-country journey where you very well might end up going to a waterpark or something.” Joy snorts, and Owen shrugs. “I’m just saying, you knew you were going on this long trip to see the sights, you should’ve prepared for water. There’s loads of fun places to swim in this country.”

“Well, yeah, but I never had any reason to go swimming until you came along back in Indiana.” He quirks an eyebrow at Joy, “I didn’t need a bathing suit until you came along.”

“You didn’t even go to the pool at any hotels?” Joy asks, honestly a bit surprised, leaning toward Owen a little, “Are you like my sister, do hotel swimming pools give you the heebie jeebies? Because I don’t blame you. I mean think of just how many people have been in and out of that pool, and who the fuck knows how often the water really gets cleaned or changed or whatever.”

Owen pulls into the Walmart parking lot and finds a space while Joy rambles about the dangers of hotel pools. Owen puts the car in park, turns a bit to face Joy and rests his hand over the back of his seat. “Okay, so I wasn’t worried about hotel pools before, but I sure as shit am now. So thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome,” Joy cuts in, smirking a bit and quickly climbing out of the car and heading off toward the doors, leaving Owen behind. He’ll catch up, but it’s funny to see Joy go, a little pep in his step because he’s excited to buy bathing suits or whatever.

Owen makes sure the car is locked before following after, and he doesn’t catch up until Joy’s at the rack of various swim trunks, flipping through and humming softly. He’s mumbling to himself as he tries to determined what would be best. Owen leans on the rack and flips through with less enthusiasm. Mostly he’s watching Joy, who eventually grabs one and grins. “Okay I like this one,” he declares, and holds up a pair that are blue stripes. “They have fucking drawstrings on the legs, look,” He tugs on a string. Owen quirks an eyebrow at that.

“Neat. Those’ll be convenient for, uh, y’know,” he gestures vaguely to Joy’s legs, “How are we doing that, by the way? Do I just have to carry you all day and put you in inner tubes and shit?”

“I mean, probably. Technically I could scoots along myself, but it’ll be easier if you help. Maybe they’ll have some kind of wheelchair I can use to get from place to place, and then you only have to worry about inner tubing me.” Joy smiles, this cute thing that makes Owen worry a lot less about whether or not they’ll be okay with him in a waterpark.

He picks out a pair of shorts for himself, some plain black ones. There’s some white details on them but not much. They’re pretty bland, in the grand scheme. “Alright, that works for me. I mean I won’t mind carrying you if they don’t have anything to wheel you around in. We’ll just, y’know, burn that bridge when we get to it.” Joy smiles, nods at him, and looks down to his choice of shorts once more. Owen watches him for a moment before Joy nods again, satisfied with his choice. They head for the register.

They head to the self checkout, which ended up being on the other side of the store from where they parked, but that’s no big deal. They purchase their suits as Owen starts telling Joy all about how awesome the park they’re going to is.

“I mean it’s basically two parks, when you really think about it, because there’s the old park and the new park, right? So you can go from one to the other and they’re like totally different parks. I like the new side, because it’s where the wave pool is, and who doesn’t love a good wave pool, I mean, you’d have to be completely boring to not- Joy? Hey, Joy.” He turns a bit, when he realizes Joy isn’t next to him anymore. He turns around to see him stopped and staring at a wall.

He leans a bit to see what Joy is looking at. He realizes it’s the board they’ve got that’s covered in missing persons posters. “Hey, Joy?” he calls out, but Joy still doesn’t move. Owen heads back to him, “Are you good?”

Joy’s eyes don’t move, he’s really hung up on something, huh? “Your last name is… Peterson, right?”

“Uh, yeah, why does that… Why?” Owen finally turns a bit and scans the posters before landing on the one he’s sure that Joy is staring at. It’s one just like all the others except it’s… Owen.

They both continue to stare at it for a moment. Owen feels a sort of panic in him and he steps up, grabbing the paper and ripping it off the wall. “Come on, let’s go,” he insists, grabbing Joy’s arm and tugging a little. But Joy doesn’t budge, he’s staring at Owen now.

“Owen, what the fuck?”

“Look, it’s- it’s nothing, I’ll explain in the car, can we go, please?”

Joy pulls his hand out of Owen’s and he holds both his hands up, “Fine, fine, but it better be a good explanation, because what the fuck, Owen?” He gestures to the balled up paper in Owen’s hand and Owen rolls his eyes.

He grabs Joy’s arm again and this time he pulls a bit harder, “I know, listen it’ll make sense, just- come on!” Joy finally gives, and Owen drags him out of the store. The silence and tension is building up quickly between them even as they sit in the car. Joy snatches the paper from Owen before he can even think to hold on tight, and Owen watches Joy unfold it, and scrutinize it for a solid five minutes before he tries to speak.

“Joy, I-”

“No, nope, not yet. Owen, you’re on a missing person poster, people don’t just, like… What?”

Owen fidgets a bit, shifting down in his seat and hugging himself a little, “It’s not a big deal, okay, jesus, I just. I didn’t… Tell anyone I left. It’s not like I got kidnapped or anything, I don’t even know who reported me missing, I didn’t think anyone would bother to report me missing, I don’t know why there’s a poster of me, no one should have cared I was gone, so can we just ignore it? I know where I am, that’s all that matters, right?”

“No, Owen! That’s not all that matters! We’ve been driving around for, what, like three months? And you started a month before you met me, Owen, someone out there, someone who cares that you disappeared made this report, and they’ve been sitting at home waiting for a phone call telling them you’re okay, this is a big deal! It’s been four months, what if they think you’re dead or something?”

Owen shakes his head, hard, and he sits up again, putting on his seat belt and starting the car, “It was probably just the school police or something! I didn’t show up to class and they couldn’t find me in my dorm so they just reported me missing because no one knew where I was, it’s not- jesus, Joy, no one’s sitting at home worrying about me, no one cares about me that much.”

“I care about you that much, but I’m not the one who-”

“That’s not what I meant, Joy, fuck, just drop it, okay?” Joy’s mouth snaps shut. He stares at Owen as he backs out of the parking space and peels out of the parking lot. Joy settles into his seat, puts on his seat belt, and holds onto the poster as they head back to the hotel.

The ride is tense and quiet. Owen can’t get himself to turn on the radio, worried it will break this tension and Joy will start yelling at him or something.

They get to the hotel finally. Owen grabs their bags and he watches as Joy leaves him behind to head into their room. The door slams, and Owen follows behind, letting himself in and gently closing the door behind him. It seems Joy has already locked himself in the bathroom. Owen just sighs, drops their things, changes into pajamas and goes to bed. Joy can’t exactly stay in the bathroom forever, and Owen pushing him to talk about this would definitely be the wrong move. Not that Owen is particularly eager to broach the subject, either, but if he could have convinced Joy to not treat it like it’s a big deal, that would have been great.

Instead, Owen lays down to try and go to sleep, and he stays like that for a while before he feels Joy climb into bed with him. He presses up against his back and asks softly if he’s awake.

“Yeah,” Owen answers softly, “unfortunately. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I know why you wouldn’t wanna tell me,” Joy says softly, pressing a gentle kiss to his shoulder blade. “I… I made a phone call.”

Owen shakes his head. He pushes himself to sit up, “Shit, seriously?”

 

“Yeah. She was a girl from one of your classes. I told her the whole story, even sent her pictures so she’d believe me.” Owen can feel Joy’s frown in the dark. “She said that last she’d heard you were in the hospital, and then you just… Up and vanished. She said no one else was worried about you. Or at least didn’t seem to be.”

“I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t have been worried about me either.”

Joy’s frown doesn’t budge. He sits up to give Owen’s shoulder another kiss, “Can you please tell me what happened? Why were you in the hospital.”

Owen shakes his head a little, he turns over and he grabs Joy’s shoulders, pulling him into an intense kiss. “I’ll… Jesus, I’ll tell you, but i just. I need you to… Wait. Until I’m done to, like, say anything, y’know? It’s a long story.”

“I promise, no judgement. I’ll listen. I just… I need to know, Owen. I need to know what to expect, I need to know about this if we’re gonna keep doing this.”

“I know. I will, just… Fuck, okay so… I guess I’ll start when I was a kid, this story needs a lot of fucking context.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this and you'd like to see more, go check out joyandowen.tumblr.com where you can see more involving these characters, and asks and requests are currently open!
> 
> The blog gets updates earlier than this does!
> 
> Actually, the blog is currently 4 stories ahead, so if you want more, now, I highly recommend checking it out!


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